I can't remember the last time I read a book in a day. My life doesn't really allow for that kind of luxury anymore. But I started All is Grace by Brennan Manning yesterday morning and I simply couldn't let go of it. I read during morning cartoons. I read at the lunch table. I read while the tinies could not believe their good fortune and were allowed to play imagination all afternoon long PLUS watch a show in the afternoon (riches unsurpassed!). I read after they went to bed and when I shut the cover, I cried. I prayed. I felt profound gratitude, not for Brennan Manning, but for the relentless love of God.
I wrote a piece a couple of weeks ago called "Gratefully, Disillusioned" for Deeper Story. In it, I wrote how being disillusioned about people in leadership, the ones leading churches, ministries, the ones out in front, has been a tremendous gift of grace to me.
Oh, it didn't feel like a grace at first.
Nope, it hurt like the devil. I could not reconcile how people who had been so instrumental in my own spiritual life and growth and change could have been, in that exact same season, also struggling with tremendous sin. I was young enough, black-and-white enough, that I couldn't see how God could be in those moments, not only for me, but perhaps, for them as well.
Surely you could not be in leadership and still be in profound need of grace yourself. (You see how it was all about me? Instead of about the one that truly needed grace, for themselves and for the swath of damage that they inflicted around them, the collateral damage, needing to see Jesus with some skin on in the unforgiving light of day? Oh, did I need to grow up...)
Brennan Manning's book pulls back the curtain in humiliating, ragamuffin grace. He opens up about the chronic alcoholism, the shame-filled and love-less childhood, his struggles with pride, the collapse of his marriage, all of while he was preaching, teaching, traveling and writing the books that have impacted so many. Myself, grateful to be counted among them: The Ragamuffin Gospel changed my life profoundly, radically, forever.
God loves us as we are, not as we should be.
That counts for the ones preaching, teaching, writing and leading, ministering.
In the years since those seasons in my life, I have developed a tremendous compassion for men and women in pastoral ministry or any type of leadership. I feel moved to protect them, to pray for them, to love them, because I have been on both sides now and I know that I was still me, regardless of being in ministry or the "pastor's wife" label. I was still me. And now, as a writer, I am still me, no better or more spiritual or more anything than you or anyone else. I still have heartaches, sorrows, struggles and, yes, sin, still a deep and profound need for grace. And yet, God still works with me, through me, miracle of miracles, even with my crap and my struggles and my pride, inviting me alongside him to minister life and wholeness to the lives of people around me even in some small measure.
Oh, so this is the truth: God can breathe life through all of us, maybe especially the broken ones, the ones poor in spirit. We see God more clearly because we see our own need of His power, His love, His life clear as light.
If the person that ministered to us is clearly not the one that is perfect, the giver of life, then we are left with only the alternative, the beautiful alternative, that the life, truth, love and wisdom we received came only from God. He can and does use anyone. He can and does use me. He can and does work through us all. Any change, any fruit, any growth, any gorgeous understanding of life in the Spirit came, yes, through a broken and imperfect vessel but ultimately from the heart of God alone.
You see why I am grateful? Grateful that he uses any of us. Grateful to be disillusioned. Grateful for men like Brennan Manning that love and surrender, over and over and over, that are caught up in that furious longing of God for us all. Grateful to be a small part of God's work in any way because, oh, don't we know how much we all need him?
I cried throughout the book. It's beautifully written. Wise. Heartbreaking. Sorrowful. Repentant. If read alongside his other works, so much becomes clear. It's not Brennan as he really is, no, I think you need all of his work to understand that, but it's the rest of the story, the behind the scenes understanding of God's relentless love.
See what I mean? Grateful. Grateful. Grateful.
All is grace. Write it in ink on your heart. All is grace.
